Video of Chrome Experiments

Have you ever wonderer what your browser is capable of doing using just JavaScript? The website Chrome Experiments bundles a lot of interactive JavaScript experiments you can test right in your browser. See some of them for yourself in the following video.

Go to Chrome Experiments to test some of the JavaScript stuff yourself. And you don’t need the Chrome browser to run them.

GNU IceCat formerly known as GNU IceWeasel is not IceWeasel

You want a complicated story? Here is one. The Firefox user agent has a logo that is in terms of the Debian project not free. So they put out a differently packaged version of Firefox with a new logo and name it IceWeasel. But that did not happen until the Mozilla foundation complained to the Debian project that they cannot use the name Firefox with a different logo. To make it really complicated there was a browser called GNU IceWeasel by the GNU Project. It was renamed to GNU IceCat in 2007 to avoid name conflicts with Debian’s IceWeasel. Pretty complicated, eh?

Find out more about GNU IceCat and the GNUzilla.

Update your FF to Firefox 3.0.7 today

If you are a Mozilla Firefox you are strongly advised to upgrade to Firefox 3.0.7 as soon as possible. Several security issues were discovered in previous releases up to Firefox 3.0.6. The newest version is also more stable.

See the release notes on how to upgrade, uninstall and for troubleshooting and other frequently asked questions.

Firefox 3.0.7 fixes several issues found in Firefox 3.0.6:

• Fixed several security issues.
• Fixed several stability issues.
• Official releases for the Estonian, Kannada and Telugu languages are now available.
• Items in the “File” menu show as inactive after using the “Print” item from that menu – switching to a new tab restores them (bug 425844). This issue has been fixed.
• For some users, cookies would appear to go “missing” after a few days (bug 444600).
• Mac users of the Flashblock add-on, experienced an issue where sound from the Flash plug-in would continue to play for a short time after closing a tab or window (bug 474022).
• Fixed several issues related to accessibility features.

If you like it more technically this is scraped directly from the bug reports:

• URL spoofing with invisible control characters
• Upgrade PNG library to fix memory safety hazards
• XML data theft via RDFXMLDataSource and cross-domain redirect
• Mozilla Firefox XUL Linked Clones Double Free Vulnerability
• Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.9.0.7)

Opera Mini Simulator

If you do development for mobile sites or just want to know what Opera Mini looks and feels like before you install it on your mobile device you might to check out the Opera Mini Simulator.

The simulator is a live demo of Opera Mini that functions like it would when installed on a handset. You need to have a java plugin installed in your browser to run it. Once you do it does an amazing job to test mobile surfing behavior.

Safari 4 beta for Mac and Win

Yesterday Apple presented the world’s fastest web browser (quote apple.com). You can download a beta version for Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. Apple claims Safari 4 brings 150 features. Most exciting might be a cover flow port for open tabs and the Acid 3 compliance.

Prototype implementation of Gazelle Web Browser

Researchers Helen J. Wang, Chris Grier, Alexander Moshchuk, Samuel T. King, Piali Choudhury and Herman Venter of Microsoft Research published a paper on The Multi-Principal OS Construction of the Gazelle Web Browser.

They see a need for a new kind of web browsers as the way people use the web and web browsers has changed over the past years.

Web browsers originated as applications that people used to view static web sites sequentially. As web sites evolved into dynamic web applications composing content from various web sites, browsers have become multi-principal operating environments with resources shared among mutually distrusting web site. Nevertheless, no existing browsers, including new architectures like IE 8, Google Chrome, and OP, have a multi-principal operating system construction that gives a browser-based OS the exclusive control to manage the protection of all system resources among web site principals.

Their solution is a web browser with its own kernel for a mini operating system named Gazelle.

… we introduce Gazelle, a secure web browser constructed as a multi-principal OS. Gazelle’s Browser Kernel is an operating system that exclusively manages resource protection and sharing across web site principals. This construction exposes intricate design issues that no previous work has identified, such as legacy protection of cross-origin script source, and cross-principal, cross-process display and events protection. We elaborate on these issues and provide comprehensive solutions.

Gazelle might not only what we might see as Internet Explorer 9 some time in the future but Gazelle might be a solution for existing browsers.

Our prototype implementation and evaluation experience indicates that it is realistic to turn an existing browser into a multi-principal OS that yields significantly stronger security and robustness with acceptable performance and backward compatibility.

You find a link to the research paper (PDF) at the bottom of the blog post The Multi-Principal OS Construction of the Gazelle Web Browser.

Opera 10 alpha Screenshots

Check out some of Opera 10 new / revised features: auto update feature, HTML mail, spellcheck on the screenshots. Click on a screenshot for a larger version.

How-To: Buttons in Opera for common search queries

If you are an Opera user you might be interested in How to convert the search field into a button in the Opera Search panel?.

You find a detailled answer to this question in the Opera Watch Blog.

Yahoo! will deliver Opera Mini

Opera Software and Yahoo!® announced a partnership to bring the Opera Mini mobile Web browser and the full Internet to more mobile phone users around the world. Yahoo! will begin distributing Opera Mini via Yahoo! Mobile and also as a standalone download from Yahoo!’s mobile Web sites in the near future. The Opera Mini client will be available free of charge.

As the most popular mobile browser on the planet, Opera Mini will also be available to users of Yahoo! Mobile. Yahoo! Mobile with Opera Mini is easily accessible to end-users, operators and manufacturers and provides a cost-effective means of getting the Internet on your phone. Together, Yahoo! and Opera will bring the full Web experience to your phone, similar to how you know it from your desktop computer.

CEO Jon von Tetzchner of Opera Software is quoted in the press release Yahoo! Mobile to take flight with Opera Mini mobile Web browser.

IE 6 Death – March 2009

German it news site Golem just put up an article with the title IE 6 shall die (roughly translated). Basically they name all the initiatives that want the IE 6 to be wiped out. Some of the highlights are:

This is all about the campaign to rid the WWW of Internet Explorer 6 that has devastated web developers and held back the evolution of everything that blocks the tubes for far too long. This can not go on any longer! Off with its head!

Source: IE6: Do NOT want!

It’s time to put a deadline on dropping IE6, and I say that time is now, and the deadline should be soon… say like, March 2009. That’s roughly a little more than 6 months.

Source: We *Like* Our Internet With a Side of Revolution

We totally agree with the call and support the extinction of the IE 6!